Chapter VJapanese Evacuation From the West Coast

One of the Army's largest undertakings in the name of defense during World
War II was the evacuation of almost all persons of Japanese ancestry from
California, from the western halves of Oregon and Washington, and from southern
Arizona. The Army also removed persons of Japanese descent from Alaska and began
what was initially intended to be a substantial transfer of such persons
from Hawaii to the mainland.1
Many facets of the story of the Japanese evacuation
from the west coast have already been related in published
works.2
Here the discussion is limited to the plans and
decisions for evacuation and to the nature of the military necessity that lay
behind them.3

Initial plans for evacuation of suspected persons from strategic areas along
the Pacific front concerned enemy aliens of all three Axis nations--Germany,
Italy, and Japan--rather than persons of Japanese ancestry alone. Of the latter,
the census of 1940 showed that, out of a total of 126,947 in the continental
United States, 112,353 were living in the three Pacific states. California alone
had 93,717 Japanese, or nearly three-fourths of the national total. Of the west
coast Japanese, 40,869 were aliens ineligible for

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citizenship, and 71,484 were American-born citizens. In early 1942 there were
about 58,000 Italian and 22,000 German aliens in the Pacific states. Most of
the Germans, and a large proportion of the Japanese and Italians, lived in or
near the principal cities and adjacent strategic areas. A good many of the
German aliens were recent refugees from Nazi Germany. In contrast to the Germans
and Italians, the Japanese in the Pacific states, and especially in California,
had been the target of hostility and restrictive action for several decades, a
factor that unquestionably colored the measures taken against these people after
Pearl Harbor.4

The Background of Evacuation Planning

A prewar agreement made the Department of Justice responsible for controlling
enemy aliens in the continental United States in the event of war. During 1941
this department (primarily, through its Federal Bureau of Investigation)
scrutinized the records of prospective enemy aliens and compiled lists of those
against whom there were grounds for suspicion of disloyalty. Presidential
proclamations of 7 and 8 December 1941, dealing with the control of Japanese and
of German and Italian aliens, respectively, provided the basis for immediate
action against those so suspected. On 7 December President Roosevelt authorized
the Army to cooperate with the FBI in rounding up individual enemy aliens
considered actually or potentially dangerous. By 13 December the Department of
Justice had interned a total of 831 alien residents of the Pacific states,
including 595 Japanese and 187 Germans, and by 16 February 1942 the number of
alien Japanese apprehended had increased to 1,266. By specifically authorizing
the exclusion of enemy aliens "from any locality in which residence by an alien
enemy shall be found to constitute a danger to the public peace and safety of
the United States," the Presidential proclamations also provided a basis for
evacuation on a larger scale.5

During the first few days after the Pearl Harbor attack the west coast was greatly
alarmed by a number of reports--all false--of enemy ships offshore, and it
was in this atmosphere that the first proposal for a mass

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evacuation of the Japanese developed. On 10 December an agent of the Treasury
Department reported to Army authorities that "an estimated 20,000 Japanese
in the San Francisco metropolitan area were ready for organized action."
Without checking the authenticity of the report, the Ninth Corps Area staff
hurriedly completed a plan for their evacuation that was approved by the corps
area commander. The next morning the Army called the local FBI chief, who "scoffed
at the whole affair as the wild imaginings of a discharged former FBI man."
This stopped any further local action for the moment, but the corps area commander
duly reported the incident to Washington and expressed the hope that "it
may have the effect of arousing the War Department to some action looking to
the establishment of an area or areas for the detention
of aliens."6
His recommendation that "plans be made for large-scale internment" was forwarded
by the Chief of Staff's office to G-2 and to the Provost
Marshal General.7
On
19 December, and apparently as one consequence of this initial flurry,
General DeWitt, as commander of the Western Defense Command, recommended
to GHQ "that action be initiated at the earliest practicable date to
collect all alien subjects fourteen years of age and over, of enemy nations and
remove them to the Zone of the Interior."8

However General DeWitt may have felt during December about the treatment of
enemy aliens, he was then firmly opposed to any evacuation of citizens. In a
telephone conversation he had on 26 December with Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion,
the Provost Marshal General, the latter remarked that he had just been visited
by a representative of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, who had asked for
a roundup of all Japanese in the Los Angeles area. In response, General DeWitt
said (and General Gullion expressed agreement with what he said):

I thought that thing out to my satisfaction. . . . if we go ahead and arrest
the 93,000 Japanese, native born and foreign born, we are going to have an awful
job on our hands and are very liable to alienate the loyal Japanese from disloyal. . . .
I'm very doubtful that it would be common sense procedure to try and intern
or to intern 117,000 Japanese in this theater. . . . I told the governors of all
the states that those people should be watched better if they were watched by
the police and people of the community in which they live and have been
living for years. . . . and then inform the F.B.I. or the military authorities
of any suspicious action so we could take necessary steps to handle it . . .
rather than try to intern all those people, men, women and children, and
hold them under military control and under guard. I don't think it's a sensible

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thing to do. . . . I'd rather go along the way we are now . . . rather than
attempt any such wholesale internment. . . . An American citizen, after all, is
an American citizen. And while they all may not be loyal, I think we can weed
the disloyal out of the loyal and lock them up if
necessary.9

What General DeWitt wanted at this time was the prompt issuance of clear instructions
to FBI agents on the west coast that would enable them to take more positive
steps to prevent sabotage and espionage. At his urging Secretary of War Stimson
had conferred with Attorney General Francis Biddle, and thereafter Mr. Biddle
speeded up the preparation of regulations to implement the Presidential proclamations
of 7 and 8 December. Late in the month the Department of Justice announced regulations
requiring enemy aliens in the Western Defense Command to surrender radio transmitters,
short-wave radio receivers, and certain types of cameras, by 5 January 1942.
On 30 December General DeWitt was informed that the Attorney General had also
authorized the issuance of warrants for search and arrest in any house where
an enemy alien lived upon representation by an FBI agent that there was reasonable
cause to believe that there was contraband on
the premises.10
In addition, the Department of Justice and the Provost Marshal General had arranged to send
representatives to San Francisco to confer with General DeWitt in order to work
out more specific arrangements for controlling enemy aliens. To centralize
and expedite Army action in Washington, General Gullion also arranged for
General DeWitt to deal directly with the Provost Marshal General's office on
west coast alien problems, and for the latter to keep GHQ informed of
developments.11

The San Francisco conference took place on 4 and 5 January 1942. Before the
meetings the War Department's representative, Maj. Karl R. Bendetsen, Chief
of the Aliens Division, Provost Marshal General's office, recommended that General
DeWitt insist on several measures beyond those already ordered by the Attorney
General. In particular he urged the definition of strategic areas from
which all enemy aliens were to be excluded and that authority to prescribe such
areas be vested in the Army. He also insisted that there must be a new and complete
registration of enemy aliens and a "pass and permit" system similar
to the one prevalent in prewar Europe. The Justice representative, Assistant
Attorney General James Rowe, Jr., also

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presented broader plans for action than the Attorney General had hitherto approved.
In opening the conference, General DeWitt emphatically declared his serious
concern over the alien situation and his distrust in particular of the
Japanese population--both aliens and citizens. But, according to the later recollections
of Mr. Rowe, the general during the meetings opposed a mass evacuation of the
Japanese. What he wanted was a full implementation of the President's proclamations.
The conference ended with agreement on a plan of action providing for an alien
registration with the least practicable delay, for FBI searches of suspected
premises under regulations that subsequently proved satisfactory to General
DeWitt, and for the designation of strategic areas from which enemy aliens could
be barred by the Attorney General, who would "entertain" Army recommendations
on this score if they were accompanied by an exact description of
each area.12

The arrangements agreed upon at San Francisco took longer to put into effect
than either General DeWitt or the Justice representatives had anticipated.
The registration of enemy aliens was finally undertaken between 2 and 9 February,
and the large-scale "spot" raids that General DeWitt was especially
anxious to have launched did not get under way until the same week, so that
both operations took place in the period when agitation against the Japanese
was rapidly mounting. General DeWitt had anticipated that he could fix the boundaries
of restricted areas by 9 January, but it was 21 January before he sent the first
of his lists to Washington for transmission to the Attorney General. One of
his principal difficulties was to reconcile the recommendations of the Navy,
which by agreement were to be made through him, with the position of the Department
of Justice. Navy commanders wanted to exclude not only enemy aliens but
also all American-born Japanese who could not show "actual severance of
all allegiance to the Japanese Government."13

General DeWitt's recommendation of 21 January, for California, called for the
exclusion of enemy aliens from eighty-six Category A zones and

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their close control by a pass and permit system in eight
Category B zones. Many of the Category A areas were uninhabited or had no alien
population, but the execution of this recommendation nevertheless would have
required the evacuation of more than 7,000 persons. Only 40 percent of these
would have been Japanese aliens, and the majority would have been
Italians.14
The Secretary of War's letter (drafted in the Provost
Marshal General's office) forwarding this recommendation to Mr. Biddle added the
following comments:

In recent conferences with General DeWitt, he has expressed
great apprehension because of the presence on the Pacific coast of many thousand
alien enemies. As late as yesterday, 24 January, he stated over the telephone
that shore-to-ship and ship-to-shore radio communications, undoubtedly
coordinated by intelligent enemy control were continually operating. A few days
ago it was reported by military observers on the Pacific coast that not a single
ship had sailed from our Pacific ports without being subsequently attacked.
General DeWitt's apprehensions have been confirmed by recent visits of military
observers from the War Department to the Pacific coast.

The alarming and dangerous situation just described, in my opinion, calls for
immediate and stringent action.15

Actually there had been no Japanese submarine or surface
vessels anywhere near the west coast during the preceding month, and careful
investigation subsequently indicated that all claims of hostile shore-to-ship
and ship-to-shore communication lacked any foundation
whatsoever.16
Similar recommendations for restricted areas in
Arizona, Oregon, and Washington followed, and were forwarded to Justice by 3
February.17
By then the position of the Japanese population was
under heavy attack, and in consequence the alien exclusion program was being
eclipsed by a drive to evacuate all people of Japanese descent from the west
coast states.

Agitation for a mass evacuation of the Japanese did not reach
significant dimensions until more than a month after the outbreak of war. Then,

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beginning in mid-January 1942, public and private demands for
federal and state action increased rapidly in tempo
and volume.18
Among the first of these were letters of 16 January
addressed by Representative Leland M. Ford of Santa Monica, California, to the
Secretary of War and to other members of the Cabinet, urging that all Japanese--citizens
as well as aliens--be moved inland from the coast and put in
concentration camps for the duration of the war.19
Behind this and similar suggestions lay a profound
suspicion of the Japanese population, fanned, of course, by the nature and scope
of Japan's early military successes in the Pacific. A GHQ intelligence bulletin
of 21 January, for example, concluded that there was an "espionage net
containing Japanese aliens, first and second generation Japanese and other
nations . . . thoroughly organized and working
underground."20
In conversations with General Clark of GHQ on 20 and 21
January, General DeWitt expressed his apprehension that any enemy raid on the
west coast would probably be accompanied by "a violent outburst of coordinated
and controlled sabotage" among the Japanese population.21
In talking with General Gullion on 24 January, General DeWitt
stated what was to become one of the principal arguments for mass evacuation.
"The fact that nothing has happened so far is more or less . . . ominous," he
said, "in that I feel that in view of the fact that we have had no sporadic
attempts at sabotage that there is a control being exercised and when we have it
it will be on a mass basis."22

The publication of the report of the Roberts Commission,
which had investigated the Pearl Harbor attack, on 25 January had a large and
immediate effect both on public opinion and on government action. The report
concluded that there had been widespread espionage in Hawaii before Pearl
Harbor, both by Japanese consular agents and by Japanese residents of Oahu who
had "no open relations with the Japanese foreign
service."23
The latter

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charge, though proven false after the war was over, was especially inflammatory
at the time it was made. On 27 January General DeWitt had a long talk with
Governor Culbert L. Olson of California and afterward reported:

There's a tremendous volume of public opinion now developing against the Japanese
of all classes, that is aliens and non-aliens, to get them off the land, and
in Southern California around Los Angeles--in that area too--they want and they
are bringing pressure on the government to move all the Japanese out. As a matter
of fact, it's not being instigated or developed by people who are not thinking
but by the best people of California. Since the publication of the Roberts Report
they feel that they are living in the midst of a lot of enemies. They don't
trust the Japanese, none of them.24

After another talk two days later with the Attorney General of California, Mr.
Earl Warren, General DeWitt reported that Mr. Warren was in thorough agreement
with Governor Olson that the Japanese population should be removed from the
state of California, and the Army commander now expressed his own unqualified
concurrence in this proposal and also his willingness to accept responsibility
for the enemy alien program if it were transferred
to him.25

In Washington, as Major Bendetsen told General DeWitt on the same day, 29 January,
the California Congressional delegation was "beginning to get up in arms"
and its representatives had scheduled an informal meeting for the following
afternoon to formulate recommendations for action. Some Washington state Congressmen
also attended this meeting, to which representatives of the Justice and
War Departments were invited. Major Bendetsen reported General DeWitt's
views to the assembled Congressmen and, though denying that he was authorized
to speak for the War Department, nevertheless expressed the opinion that the
Army would be entirely willing to take over from Justice, "provided they
accorded the Army, and the Secretary of War, and the military commander
under him, full authority to require the services of any other federal agency,
and provided that federal agency was required to
respond."26
The Congressmen unanimously approved a suggested program for action, which called for an
evacuation of enemy aliens and "dual" citizens from critical areas,
but which made no specific mention of the Japanese. In presenting the Congressional
program to his chief, Major

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Bendetsen described it as actually "calling for the immediate evacuation
of all Japanese from the Pacific coastal strip including Japanese citizens of
the age of 21 and under, and calling for an Executive order of the President,
imposing full responsibility and authority (with power to requisition the
services of other Federal agencies) upon the
War Department."27
He
also reported the recommendations as adopted to General DeWitt, who expressed
general approval of them despite some technical objections. After the
Congressional meeting its chairman, Representative Clarence F. Lea, formally
presented the recommendations to the War Department.28

The next day, in reflecting on these recommendations, General DeWitt recorded
this opinion:

As a matter of fact, the steps now being taken by the Attorney General through
the FBI will do nothing more than exercise a controlling influence and preventive
action against sabotage; it will not, in my opinion, be able to stop it. The
only positive answer to this question is evacuation of all enemy aliens from
the West Coast and resettlement or internment under positive control, military
or otherwise.29

What he wanted, he told Major Bendetsen, was the removal of German and
Italian aliens as well as all Japanese residents and he wanted all evacuees from
any one particular area to be moved at the same time.30

The Department of Justice in the meantime had agreed informally to accept General
DeWitt's initial recommendation for restricted areas in California, and it was
preparing to carry out this and other aspects of the alien control program.
On 28 January it announced the appointment of Thomas C. Clark as Coordinator
of the Alien Enemy Control Program within the Western Defense Command, and Mr.
Clark arrived on the scene of action on the following day. On 29 January Justice
made its first public announcement about the restricted Category A areas that
were to be cleared of enemy aliens by 24 February.31

As a result of the Congressional recommendations and other developments,
Attorney General Biddle asked War Department representatives to attend a meeting
in his office on Saturday afternoon, 1 February. There he presented them with
the draft of a press release to be issued jointly by the Justice and War Departments,
indicating agreement on all alien control

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measures taken to date and including the statement: "The Department of
War and the Department of Justice are in agreement that the present military
situation does not at this time require the removal of American citizens of
the Japanese race." In opening the meeting Mr. Biddle stated that Justice
would have nothing whatever to do with any interference with citizens or with
a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The War Department representatives--Assistant
Secretary of War McCloy, General Gullion, and Major Bendetsen--agreed to the
wording of the press release except for the sentence quoted. The meeting then
adjourned, the War Department representatives withholding approval of any
press release until General DeWitt's views could be obtained, and until they
learned the outcome of a conference at Sacramento that had been arranged for
2 February between General DeWitt, Mr. Clark, Governor Olsen, and other federal
and state officials. Major Bendetsen informed the Chief of Staff's office that
the Justice Department's proposal had been held up also because General
DeWitt in telephone conversations had been provisionally recommending the evacuation
of the whole Japanese population from the Pacific coastal frontier. In the meantime
the Provost Marshal General's office had been formulating plans for mass evacuation
and had already located sufficient nontroop shelter for substantially all
of the west coast Japanese. In a telephone conversation immediately after the
meeting with Justice representatives, Major Bendetsen reported, General DeWitt
agreed to submit a recommendation for mass evacuation
in writing.32

Before General DeWitt could report the outcome of the Sacramento meeting, Secretary
Stimson met on 3 February with Mr. McCloy, General Gullion, and Major Bendetsen
to confer about the proposed press release and the Japanese problem in general.
They discussed a proposal under which military reservations would be established
around the big aircraft factories and some port and harbor installations, and
from which everyone could be excluded at the outset and until they were licensed
to return. In practice licenses would not be issued to Japanese residents or to
other groups or individuals under suspicion. It appeared that under this plan
citizens as well as aliens could be excluded legally without obvious
discrimination.33

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During the discussion, Mr. Stimson was handed a record of a telephone conversation
between General Marshall and General DeWitt, who had called just as the Secretary
of War's meeting was getting under way. In it, General DeWitt said:

I had a conference yesterday with the Governor and several representatives
from the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture, with a view to
removal of the Japanese from where they are now living to other portions of
the state. And the Governor thinks it can be satisfactorily handled without
having a resettlement somewhere in the central part of the United States
and removing them entirely from the state of California. As you know the people
out here are very much disturbed over these aliens, the Japanese being among
them, and want to get them out of the several communities. And I've agreed that
if they can solve the problem by getting them out of the areas limited as the
combat zone, that it would be satisfactory. That would take them 100 to 150
miles from the coast, and they're working on it. The Department of Justice has a
representative here and the Department of Agriculture, and they think the plan
is an excellent one. I'm only concerned with getting them away from around these
aircraft factories and other places.34

In other exchanges on this and succeeding days General DeWitt explained that
what the California authorities proposed to do was to move both citizen and
alien Japanese (voluntarily if possible, and in collaboration with American-born
Japanese leaders from urban areas and from along the coast to agricultural areas
within the state. They wanted to do this in particular in order to avoid
having to replace the Japanese with Mexican and Negro laborers who might otherwise
have to be brought into California in considerable numbers. The California officials
felt they needed about ten days to study the problem and come up with a workable
plan. By 4 February it appeared to General DeWitt that they could produce a
plan that would be satisfactory from a defense
standpoint.35

After the meeting with Secretary Stimson, Mr. McCloy called General DeWitt to
tell him about the licensing plan and to caution him against taking any position
in favor of mass Japanese evacuation.36
The next day General Gullion told General
Clark that Mr. Stimson and Mr. McCloy were against any mass evacuation of the
Japanese. "They are pretty much against it," he said, " and they
are also pretty much against interfering with citizens unless it can be done
legally." While agreeing that the Stimson-McCloy point of view represented
the War Department position for the

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moment, General Gullion also said that personally he did not think the licensing
action proposed was going to cure the situation.37
On this same day, 4 February, Lieutenant Colonel Bendetsen (just promoted to that rank)
in talking with General DeWitt remarked that he was sure that American citizens
of Japanese extraction would have to be excluded from some areas at least. General
DeWitt made no direct comment on this remark, but later said:

You see, the situation is this: I have never on my own initiative recommended
a mass evacuation, or the removal of any man, any Jap, other than an alien.
In other words, I have made no distinction between an alien as to whether he
is Jap, Italian, or German--that they must all get out of Area A, that is the
Category A area. The agitation to move all the Japanese away from the coast,
and some suggestions, out of California entirely--is within the State, the
population of the State, which has been espoused by the Governor. I have never
been a body [sic] to that, but I have said, if you do that, and can solve that
problem, it will be a positive step toward the protection of the coast . . . But
I have never said, "You've got to do it, in order to protect the coast"; . . . I
can take such measures as are necessary from a military standpoint to control
the American Jap if he is going to cause trouble within those
restricted areas.38

Two days earlier, on 2 February, members of Congress from the Pacific states
had organized informally under the leadership of their senior Senator, Hiram
Johnson. He had appointed two subcommittees, one headed by Senator Rufus
C. Holman of Oregon to consider plans for increased military strength along
the Pacific coast, and the other by Senator Mon C. Wallgren of Washington to
deal with the questions of enemy aliens and the prevention of sabotage. On 4
February General Clark of GHQ and Admiral Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval
Operations, offered testimony on the west coast military outlook at a meeting
of the first of these subcommittees. Before they spoke, Senator Holman summed
up the situation by saying that the people there were alarmed and horrified
as to their persons, their employment, and their homes. General Clark said
that he thought the Pacific states were unduly alarmed. While both he and Admiral
Stark agreed the west coast defenses were not adequate to prevent the enemy
from attacking, they also agreed that the chance of any sustained attack or
of an invasion was as General Clark put it--nil. They recognized that sporadic
air raids on key installations were a distinct possibility, but they also held
that the west coast military defenses were considerable and in fairly good shape;
and, as Admiral Stark said, from the military point of view the Pacific
coast necessarily had a low priority as compared with Hawaii and the far
Pacific. These

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authoritative Army and Navy views were passed on to the Wallgren
sub-committee, but they do not seem to have made much
impression.39

On this same day, 4 February, the federal government's Office of Facts and Figures
completed an analysis of a hasty survey of public opinion in California and
concluded: "Even with such a small sample, . . . one can infer the situation
in California is serious; that it is loaded with potential dynamite; but that
it is not as desperate as some people believe."40
A contemporary
Navy report described what was happening to the Japanese population in
the Los Angeles area in these words: " . . . loss of employment and income
due to anti-Japanese agitation by and among Caucasian Americans, continued personal
attacks by Filipinos and other racial groups, denial of relief funds to desperately
needy cases, cancellation of licenses for markets, produce houses, stores, etc.,
by California State authorities, discharges from jobs by the wholesale, [and]
unnecessarily harsh restrictions on travel including discriminatory regulations
against all Nisei preventing them from engaging in commercial fishing."
While expressing opposition to any mass evacuation of the Japanese, the report
concluded that if practices such as those described continued there would "most
certainly be outbreaks of sabotage, riots, and other civil strife in the not
too distant future."41

The Decision for Mass Evacuation

It was within this setting that Colonel Bendetsen on 4 February addressed
a long memorandum to General Gullion which concluded that an enemy alien evacuation
"would accomplish little as a measure of safety," since the alien
Japanese were mostly elderly people who could do little harm if they would.
Furthermore, their removal would inevitably antagonize large numbers of their
relatives among the American-born Japanese. After considering the various alternatives
that had been suggested for dealing with citizens, Colonel Bendetsen recommended
the designation of military areas

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from which all persons who did not have permission to enter and remain would
be excluded as a measure of military necessity. In his opinion, this plan was
clearly legal and he recommended that it be executed by three steps: first,
the issuance of an Executive order by the President authorizing the Secretary
of War to designate military areas; second, the designation of military areas
upon the recommendation of General DeWitt; and, third, the immediate evacuation
from areas so designated of all persons to whom it was not proposed to issue
licenses to re-enter or remain. Colonel Bendetsen assumed that, if military
areas were established on the west coast in place of all Category A areas thus
far recommended by General DeWitt, about 30,000 people would have to be evacuated.
On the same day, Colonel Bendetsen's division drafted a proposal for applying
the military area scheme to the entire nation.42

The Deputy Provost Marshal General, Col. Archer L. Lerch, indorsed Colonel Bendetsen's
proposals, and in doing so commented on what he called the "deciding weakening
of General DeWitt" on the question of Japanese evacuation, which he considered
"most unfortunate." He also thought the plan for resettlement within
California being worked out between General DeWitt and the state authorities
savored "too much of the spirit of Rotary" and overlooked "the
necessary cold-bloodedness of war."43
General Gullion presented a condensed
version of Colonel Bendetsen's observations and recommendations to Mr. McCloy on 5 February. He also noted that General DeWitt had changed his position
and now appeared to favor a more lenient treatment of the American-born Japanese
to be worked out in cooperation with their leaders; in General Gullion's opinion,
such cooperation was dangerous and the delay involved was
"extremely dangerous."44
A revision of his memorandum, with all reference to General DeWitt deleted,
became the Provost Marshal General's recommendation of 6 February to Mr. McCloy
that steps be taken immediately to eliminate what General Gullion described
as the great danger of Japanese-inspired sabotage on the west coast. He advised
that these steps should include the internment by the Army of all alien Japanese
east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, together with as many citizen members of
their families as would voluntarily

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accompany them, and the exclusion of all citizen Japanese from restricted
zones and their resettlement with the assistance of various
federal agencies.45

On the following day, 7 February, Colonel Bendetsen read General Gullion's
memorandum to General DeWitt, who expressed some enthusiasm for its recommendations
but who did not want to indorse them without further
study.46
On the same day Colonel Bendetsen drafted an acknowledgement to the Congressional letter
of 30 January, which affirmed that "an adequate solution" for the
west coast situation would be "formulated and recommended in the very near
future."47
By 7 February, also, Mr. McCloy had decided to send Colonel
Bendetsen to the west coast "to confer with General DeWitt in connection
with mass evacuation of all Japanese,"48
a mission that was presently to produce new and detailed recommendations from the west coast
commander.49

In the meantime, the War and Justice Departments had been approaching an
impasse over the area evacuations contemplated under the enemy alien control
program. After agreeing informally to accept General DeWitt's initial California
recommendation, Justice officials balked at accepting the very large Category
A areas he recommended for Washington and Oregon, since they included the entire
cities of Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland. The

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execution of this recommendation would have required the evacuation of about
10,700 additional enemy aliens and, as in the case of California, only about
40 percent of these would have been Japanese. As a practical matter the Department
of Justice would have found it extremely difficult to supply either the manpower
or the internment facilities that a compulsory evacuation of 17,000 or
18,000 enemy aliens would have required, and by 4 February its representatives
were intimating that, if there were any further Category A recommendations or
if the evacuation of any citizens were to be involved, Justice would have to
bow out and turn its evacuation responsibilities over to the War Department.
General DeWitt on 4 February was considering putting the whole Los Angeles area
into Category A, because his Air commander had recommended Category A zones
around 220 different installations that, when plotted on the map, almost
blanketed the area anyway. For the same reason, General DeWitt believed he might
have to put all of San Diego in Category A also.50
He finally recommended
the blanket Category A coverage of these two cities on 7 February, and five
days later he recommended that almost all of the San Francisco Bay area be put
in Category A. If all of General DeWitt's recommendations for Category A areas
through 12 February had been accepted, it would have made necessary the evacuation
of nearly 89,000 enemy aliens from areas along the Pacific coast-only 25,000
of whom would have been Japanese.51
Additionally, of course, General DeWitt
was counting upon the California state authorities to persuade the citizen Japanese
to evacuate California's urban areas and other sensitive points along the coast.

On 9 February Attorney General Biddle formally agreed to announce the Category
A areas initially recommended for Arizona, California, Oregon,

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and Washington as prohibited to enemy aliens by 15 or 24 February-with the
latter date applicable to those areas that had a considerable alien population.
But Mr. Biddle questioned the necessity of forcibly excluding German and Italian
aliens from all of these areas and wondered why whole cities had been included
in Washington and Oregon and none in California. He added that if, as he had
been informally advised, all of Los Angeles County was going to be recommended
as a Category A area, the Department of Justice would have to step out of the
picture because it did not have the physical means to carry out a mass evacuation
of this scope. In conclusion, he stated that the Department of Justice was not
authorized under any circumstances to evacuate American citizens; if the Army
for reasons of military necessity wanted that done in particular areas, the Army
itself would have to do it.52

The Attorney General's stand led naturally to the drafting of a War Department
memorandum summarizing the "questions to be determined re Japanese exclusion"
that needed to be presented to President Roosevelt for decision. These questions were:

Is the President willing to authorize us to move Japanese citizens as well
as aliens from restricted areas?

Should we undertake withdrawal from the entire strip DeWitt originally recommended,
which involves a number of over 100,000 people, if we included both aliens and
Japanese citizens?

Should we undertake the intermediate step involving, say, 70,000, which
includes large communities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle?

Should we take any lesser step such as the establishment of restricted areas
around airplane plants and critical installations, even though General DeWitt
states that in several, at least, of the large communities this would be wasteful,
involve difficult administrative problems, and might be a source of more continuous
irritation and trouble than 100 percent withdrawal from
the area?53

After a morning conference with Mr. McCloy and General Clark about the alternative
courses proposed, Mr. Stimson tried to see the President to discuss them with
him. Mr. Roosevelt was too busy for an interview, but in a telephone call at
1:30 p.m. the Secretary after describing the situation to the President "fortunately
found that he was very vigorous about it and

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[he] told me to go ahead on the line that I had myself thought
the best."54
What Mr. Stimson thought best at this time, according
to his Diary, was to begin as quickly as possible with the evacuation of both
citizen and alien Japanese from the vicinity of "the most vital places of army
and navy production."55

In reporting Mr. Stimson's conversation with the President to San Francisco,
Mr. McCloy told Colonel Bendetsen that "we have carte blanche to do what
we want to as far as the President's concerned," and that Mr. Roosevelt
had specifically authorized the evacuation of citizens. Mr. McCloy said that
the President had recognized that there probably would be some repercussions
to the evacuation of citizens, but that what was to be done had to be dictated
by the military necessity of the situation, subject only to the qualification,
"Be as reasonable as you can." The Assistant Secretary also told Colonel
Bendetsen that he thought the President was prepared to sign an Executive
order giving the War Department the authority to carry out whatever action it
decided upon.56

The President's decisions as reported by Mr. McCloy gave an understandable
impetus to the preparation of new written recommendations by General DeWitt,
which with the assistance of Colonel Bendetsen he had begun to draft on the
evening of 10 February. These were embodied in a formal memorandum for the Secretary
of War of 13 February, which was forwarded with a covering memorandum for GHQ
via air mail.57
General DeWitt's new recommendations differed from those he
had already submitted under the enemy alien control program in only one
important particular: he recommended the enforced evacuation by federal
authority of the American-born Japanese from the Category A areas already recommended
by him in previous letters to the Secretary of War.58
His memorandum

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reached GHQ at 5:00 p.m., 18 February. On 19 February it was decided at a GHQ
staff conference not to concur in General DeWitt's recommendations, and
instead to recommend to General Clark that only enemy alien leaders be arrested
and interned. General Clark, being aware of developments in the War Department,
must have realized the futility of a GHQ
nonconcurrence.59
On 20 February
GHQ sent General DeWitt's memoranda to the War Department through normal channels,
with an indorsement that they were being "transmitted in view of the proposed
action already decided upon by the War Department."60
They finally
reached the Provost Marshal General's office "for remark and recommendation"
on 24 February, the day after General DeWitt received new instructions from
the War Department that differed in many particulars from the recommendations
he had submitted.61

In the meantime, on 13 February, the Pacific coast Congressional sub-committee
on aliens and sabotage had adopted the following recommendations:

We recommend the immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage and
all others, aliens and citizens alike, whose presence shall be deemed dangerous
or inimical to the defense of the United States from all strategic areas.

In defining said strategic areas we recommend that such areas include all military
installations, war industries, water and power installations, oil fields, and
refineries, transportation and other essential facilities as well as adequate
protective areas adjacent thereto.

We further recommend that such areas be enlarged as expeditiously as possible
until they shall encompass the entire strategic area of the states of California,
Oregon and Washington, and Territory of Alaska.

These recommendations were forwarded to President Roosevelt with a covering
letter of the same date signed on behalf of the entire west coast Congressional
delegation.62
On 16 February the President sent the letter and its inclosed
recommendations to Secretary Stimson, with a memorandum

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that read: "Will you please be good enough to reply to Congressman Lea in
regard to the enclosed letter."63

On the same day, 16 February, Colonel Bendetsen boarded an airplane in San Francisco,
and he reached the War Department's offices in Washington about noon on
17 February.64
Before his arrival the Provost Marshal General's office
initiated a telegraphic survey among the corps area commanders with the
following message:

Probable that orders for very large evacuation of enemy aliens of all
nationalities predominantly Japanese from Pacific Coast will issue within 48
hours. Internment facilities will be taxed to utmost. Report at once maximum you
can care for, including housing, feeding, medical care, and supply. Your
breakdown should include number of men, women, and children. Very important to
keep this a closely guarded secret.65

A follow-up letter explained that 100,000 enemy aliens would be involved, 60,000
of whom would be women and children, and that all were to be interned east of
the Western Defense Command, "50 percent in the Eighth Corps Area, 30 percent
in the Seventh, and 10 percent each in the Fourth
and Sixth."66
There were three reasons for the intention (as of 17 February)
for removing the Pacific coast Japanese to areas east of the Western Defense
Command. Since mid-December General DeWitt had insisted that internment
of enemy aliens ought to be outside his theater of operations; some of the governments
of the intermountain states had already indicated that they would not countenance
any free settlement of the west coast Japanese within their borders; and, lastly,
an Army survey of existing facilities for internment

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in the five interior states of the Ninth Corps Area disclosed that they
could not accommodate more than 2,500 people.67

The War Department's plan for mass evacuation took definite shape in an afternoon
conference on 17 February of Secretary Stimson with Mr. McCloy, General Gullion,
General Clark, and Colonel Bendetsen. Despite General Clark's protest that any
mass evacuation would involve the use of too many troops, Mr. Stimson decided
that General DeWitt should be instructed to commence an evacuation immediately
and to the extent he deemed necessary for the protection of vital installations.
After the meeting General Clark consulted his GHQ chief, General McNair, who
decided that General DeWitt should not be allotted any additional troops for
evacuation purposes.68

On the evening of 17 February, Mr. McCloy, General Gullion, and Colonel Bendetsen
met with Justice representatives at the home of Attorney General Biddle. After
some preliminary discussion, General Gullion pulled from his pocket and proceeded
to read the draft of a proposed Presidential Executive order that would authorize
the Secretary of War to remove both citizens and aliens from areas that he might
designate. Mr. Biddle accepted the draft without further argument, because the
President had already indicated to him that this was a matter for military
decision. After several more meetings between Justice and Army officials during
the next two days, the Executive order was presented to the President and signed
by him late on 19 February.69
Between 18 and 20 February Mr. McCloy, General
Gullion, and Colonel Bendetsen drafted the instructions for General DeWitt to
guide his execution of the evacuation plan, and embodied them in two letter
directives, both dated 20 February.70

On 21 February the Secretary of War, in accordance with the President's request,
answered the Congressional letter of 13 February by assuring the

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west coast delegation that plans for the partial or complete evacuation of
the Japanese from the Pacific coast were being
formulated.71
In consultation
with the Department of Justice, War Department officials at this time also prepared
a draft of legislation that would put teeth into the enforcement of the new
evacuation program, but did not submit it to Congress until 9 March. This draft
as a bill became Public Law 503 after brief debate; it was passed by a voice
vote in both houses on 19 March and signed by the President on 21 March. Three
days later, the Western Defense Command issued its first compulsory exclusion
order.72

As already noted, the plan for evacuation embodied in the War Department's
directives of 20 February differed materially from the plan recommended
by General DeWitt in his memorandum of 13 February. The central objective of
the DeWitt plan was to move all enemy aliens and American-born Japanese
out of all Category A areas in California, Oregon, and Washington that
the general had recommended through 12 February. Although General DeWitt had
repeatedly described the Japanese as the most dangerous element of the
west coast population, he also made it clear as late as 17 February that he
was "opposed to any preferential treatment to any alien irrespective of
race," and therefore that he wanted German and Italian aliens as well as
all Japanese evacuated from Category A areas.73
His plan assumed that all
enemy aliens would be interned under guard outside the Western Defense Command,
at least until arrangements could be made for their resettlement. Citizen
evacuees would either accept internment voluntarily or relocate themselves with
such assistance as state and federal agencies might offer. Although this group
would be permitted to resettle in Category B areas within the coastal zone,
General DeWitt clearly preferred that they move inland.

The central objective of the War Department plan was to move all Japanese out
of the California Category A areas first, and they were not to be permitted
to resettle within Category B areas or within a larger Military Area No. 1
to be established along the coast.74
There was to be no evacuation of Italians
without the express permission of the Secretary of

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War except on an individual basis. Although the War Department plan ostensibly
provided that German aliens were to be treated in the same manner as the
Japanese, it qualified this intention by providing for the exemption of "bona
fide" German refugees. This qualification automatically stayed the evacuation
of German aliens until General DeWitt could discover who among them were genuine
refugees. The War Department plan contemplated voluntary relocation by
all types of evacuees to the maximum extent possible, with internment as necessary
outside the Western Defense Command. Another major difference between the
two plans was related to General DeWitt's recommendation of a licensing
system for Category A areas; the President's Executive order of 19 February
did not require the application of the licensing plan, and licensing was
not embodied in the War Department's directives of 20 February.

There were other lesser differences between the two plans. General DeWitt
had recommended that before any evacuation all preparations should be complete,
including the "selection and establishment of internment facilities
in the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Corps Areas." As already noted, the War
Department at this time was also planning to put all internees east of the Ninth
Corps Area, but its directives did not contemplate any postponement of
evacuation until internment facilities were ready. General DeWitt had also recommended
the initial and separate internment of all enemy alien males over 14 years of
age, until family units could be established in internment camps. The War
Department plan had no such provision. As for the number of people to be involved,
General DeWitt's memorandum contained an estimate that 133,000 people would
have to be evacuated either voluntarily or by compulsion. A breakdown of
this figure (based on his previous Category A recommendations) discloses that
his plan would have involved about 69,000 Japanese (25,000 aliens and 44,000
American citizens), about 44,000 Italians, and about 20,000 Germans. The War
Department planners apparently made no estimate of the numbers that their directives
would involve, but eventually they did involve more than 110,000 Japanese residents--citizens
and aliens--of the west coast states.

The Evacuation of the Japanese

How the Army would handle Japanese evacuation remained uncertain for a month
or so after General DeWitt received his new instructions. That it would have
to act, and quickly, was certain by late February. In effect President Roosevelt
with the unanimous backing of the Pacific coast Con-

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gressional delegation had directed the War Department to evacuate the Japanese,
and the War Department now detailed its most industrious advocate of mass
evacuation to help General DeWitt execute the mandate. And, although there was
no threat of an enemy invasion of the west coast that might have stirred disloyalty
among some of its Japanese residents, a condition had developed that made some
solution of the Japanese problem mandatory.75

This condition had been forecast in a careful survey of Pacific coast
public opinion made during the week of 7-13 February (and analyzed too
late to influence the course of events), which indicated a state of affairs
needing "prompt and careful attention," because of the very widely
held belief along the coast that the Japanese population was disloyal and a
menace to the national security. The report of this survey concluded that "racial
or national antagonism seems to account in large part for the unfavorable
attitude toward the Japanese" and that the factor of economic competition
was relatively minor. It also indicated a much more pronounced anti-Japanese
sentiment in southern California than elsewhere along the coast; outside of
southern California, less than one-half of those interviewed favored the
internment of Japanese aliens, and only 14 percent the internment of Japanese
citizens.76

By late February a stream of pleas for action was flowing into the War and Justice
Departments from California. On 22 February, for example, the Commandant, Eleventh
Naval District, sent the following dispatch to Washington:

Situation of Japanese in Southern California very critical. Many are forced
to move with no provision as to subsequent housing or means of livelihood. Many
families already destitute. All localities object to movement of evacuees into
their area. Recommend that the Departments concerned make immediate plans
for the evacuation and reestablishment of aliens removed from areas designated
by military authorities.77

On the succeeding two days the shelling of the Santa Barbara oil installations

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and the "Battle of Los Angeles" added a strong fillip to the local
temper of opinion.78
Even after General DeWitt's public announcement of
evacuation plans at the beginning of March, the San Francisco representative of
the Office of Government Reports held there was a "serious possibility of mob
violence and vigilante committees if the Army does not work
fast enough."79

On 23 February Colonel Bendetsen arrived in San Francisco to serve as a liaison
officer between General DeWitt and Assistant Secretary of War McCloy and to
help in the execution of the War Department directives. With his assistance,
General DeWitt drafted and obtained War Department approval of his first
public proclamation of the new program and of an explanatory press release,
both of which were issued on 2 March. The proclamation established two
military areas, a Military Area No. 1, which encompassed the western halves
of the three Pacific states and southern Arizona and a Military Area No. 2,
which covered the eastern halves of the Pacific states and northern Arizona.
The press release forecast the exclusion of all persons of Japanese ancestry
from Military Area No. 1, and the subsequent exclusion of German and Italian
aliens at least from the prohibited zones within Area
No. 1.80

Apparently, in late February and early March both the War Department and General
DeWitt hoped that the mere announcement of prohibited and restricted zones would
induce a voluntary migration out of these zones, as had been the case in the
California prohibited zones previously announced by the Department of Justice.
General DeWitt estimated that 15,000 persons (of whom many must have been Japanese
citizens) had moved out of these zones by midnight, 24 February. Most of them
had moved into adjacent restricted zones in
urban areas.81
In his press release of 2 March, General DeWitt urged the Japanese to move voluntarily into
the interior from Military Area No. 2 and stated that those who did so
would "in all probability not again be disturbed." But only about
2,000 Japanese residents actually moved out of Area No. 1 before it was announced
that voluntary migration would soon cease.82
Although large numbers of Japanese appear to have been willing before 1 March
to migrate voluntarily into the interior, most of them

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could not do so thereafter for two reasons: first, almost nothing had been
done to help evacuees solve the many personal problems inevitable in a quick
removal; and second, there was a very open and rapidly spreading hostility among
governments and populations of interior areas to the free settlement of Japanese
in their midst.83

That the first of these reasons for the failure of voluntary migration was the
fault of the federal government as a whole seems evident from Secretary Stimson's
record of a Cabinet discussion on 27 February concerning Japanese evacuation:

The President brought this up first of all and showed that thus far he has
given very little attention to the principal task of the transportation and
resettlement of the evacuees. I outlined what DeWitt's plan was and his proclamation
so far as I could without having the paper there. Biddle supported us loyally,
saying that he had the proclamation already in his hands. I enumerated the five
classes in the order which are being affected and tried to make clear that the
process was necessarily gradual, DeWitt being limited by the size of the task
and the limitations of his own force. The President seized upon the idea that
the work should be taken off the shoulders of the Army so far as possible after
the evacuees had been selected and removed from places where they were dangerous.
There was general confusion around the table arising from the fact that nobody
had realized how big it was, nobody wanted to take care of the evacuees, and
the general weight and complication of the project. Biddle suggested that a
single head should be chosen to handle the resettlement instead of the pulling
and hauling of all the different agencies, and the President seemed to accept
this; the single person to be of course a civilian and not
the Army . . . .84

The person chosen for this assignment was Mr. Milton S. Eisenhower of the Department
of Agriculture. Mr. Eisenhower worked informally on the evacuation problem from
the end of February until 18 March, when President Roosevelt named him
director of the newly created War Relocation Authority. Before its establishment,
General DeWitt had acquired a civil affairs organization of his own to handle
evacuation problems. The directives of 20 February in effect put the Western
Defense Command's evacuation operations under the direct supervision of the
Secretary of War, and, as noted, Colonel Bendetsen had been chosen as coordinator
of matters between Washington and San Francisco.85
During a visit of Mr. McCloy to

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the west coast, General DeWitt, on 10 March, established a Civil Affairs Division
in his general staff, and, on the following day, a Wartime Civil Control Administration
to act as his operations agency for carrying out the evacuation program. At
Mr. McCloy's urging, and with General Marshall's approval, Colonel Bendetsen
was formally transferred from the War Department staff and made chief of
both agencies.86
These agencies and the War Relocation Authority provided the
administrative means for handling a controlled rather than voluntary evacuation.

By early March the Army had selected two sites--one in the Owens Valley of California
and the other along the Colorado River in Arizona--for relocating as many
as 20,000 to 30,000 Japanese who could not or would not locate
anywhere else.87
When, by mid-March, most of the interior states west of the Mississippi River
had made it known officially that they would not permit free settlement of citizen
or alien Japanese within their borders, it became obvious that if the Japanese
were to be evacuated en masse they would have to be put in government-operated
camps under armed guard. On 21 March (the same day that President Roosevelt
signed the enforcement act) Colonel Bendetsen recommended the termination of
voluntary migration, and four days later General DeWitt and Mr. Eisenhower
agreed that it would have to end. In consequence, General DeWitt stopped voluntary
migration on 29 March and prepared to carry out a program of enforced evacuation,
initially to Army-operated assembly centers. The large-scale movement of Japanese
under Army supervision actually began on a voluntary basis from the Los Angeles
area on 21 March; after the end of March all evacuations (beginning with Bainbridge
Island) were compulsory.88
Until a meeting with the governors and other officials
of the intermountain states at Salt Lake City on 7 April, the War Relocation
Authority continued to hope that it could arrange the free settlement of
a substantial number of the evacuated Japanese in the interior. But the intransigent

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JAPANESE EVACUEES ARRIVE AT THE COLORADO RIVER RELOCATION CENTER, Poston, Ariz.

attitudes exhibited at that meeting persuaded all concerned that the
Japanese, whether aliens or citizens, would have to be kept indefinitely in
large government-operated camps, called relocation centers, which were built by
the Army Engineers in the spring and summer of 1942.89

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North of the Pacific states, the Canadian Government carried out an evacuation
of Japanese residents from British Columbia that closely paralleled that
from the west coast of the United States in time and circumstance. The agitation
against the Japanese appears to have developed more quickly in British Columbia
than in California, and as a consequence the commander of the Canadian Army's
Pacific forces recommended on 30 December 1941 that the Japanese be removed
from the coastal area, primarily because he thought there was a definite danger
of interracial riots and bloodshed.90
On 14 January 1942 the Canadian Government
announced plans for a partial evacuation of British Columbia's 22,000 Japanese,
and on 26 February it authorized a complete evacuation from a wide area inland
from the coast. As a result, 21,000 Japanese residents (three-fourths of them Canadian-born)
were evacuated between February and October to interior camps
similar to the relocation centers in the
United States.91

Further north, in Alaska, the Army had been made responsible for controlling
enemy aliens soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, and it had promptly interned
those considered dangerous. On 6 March 1942 the Secretary of War extended his
authority under Executive Order 9066 to the Army commander in Alaska. By the
end of May, he had evacuated not only his alien internees but also the whole
Japanese population of Alaska--230, of whom more than half were United States
citizens.92

It was General DeWitt's intention in early May not only to complete the evacuation
of Japanese from Military Area No. 1, but also to move all of the other 16,000
Japanese living within an eight-state area "so there won't be any Japanese
in the Western Defense Command who are not in resettlement
projects."93
Thereafter, General DeWitt intended also to carry out an evacuation of German
and Italian aliens from all prohibited zones within the Western Defense Command.
There were more than one thousand of these zones after mid-March when he extended
the scope of the enemy alien program to the four interior states of his
command not previously covered by it. But his plans for a collective evacuation
of German and Italian aliens faced

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strong opposition. In General DeWitt's own San Francisco headquarters, the
assistant chief of the Civil Affairs Division concluded:

So far as concerns the mission [of the Western Defense Command] of protecting
against sabotage and the evacuation of German and Italian aliens, the accomplishment
of the mission should be started by a different approach. In the case of the
Japanese, their oriental habits of life, their and our inability to assimilate
biologically, and, what is more important, our inability to distinguish the
subverters and saboteurs from the rest of the mass made necessary their class
evacuation on a horizontal basis. In the case of the Germans and the Italians,
such mass evacuation is neither necessary nor desirable.

He went on to urge instead a policy of individual exclusion for the Germans
and Italians, rather than mass evacuation.94
In Washington, as Colonel Bendetsen
subsequently explained, "there was much opposition in the War Department
to the evacuation of Italian aliens and considerable opposition, as well, to the
collective evacuation of German aliens."95

The Washington opposition to German and Italian evacuation developed in part
as a consequence of the Provost Marshal's February proposal to extend the
military area scheme to the entire continental
United States.96
On 13 February the War Department had asked eight of the corps area commanders to submit
recommendations for areas within which the Army should control the residence
or presence of civilians to a greater or lesser
degree.97
Each of them responded
with recommendations, which, if adopted, would have required a fairly sizable
alien exclusion program throughout the nation. For example, the Second Corps
Area commander recommended a prohibited zone ten miles wide along the seacoast
from the Delaware-Maryland state line northward to the eastern tip of Long
Island (and including all of Suffolk County, N.Y.) from which all enemy alien
residents were to be evacuated. Within this area he thought that it would probably
be necessary to regulate the residence and movement of all other civilians by
a permit and pass system. He also recommended a prohibition against enemy aliens
approaching or being found within one hundred yards of any waterfront installation
in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area.98
Collectively the corps area
recommendations seemed to reflect an early wartime attitude

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toward aliens expressed immediately after the war by an officer of the Provost
Marshal General's office in these words:

In connection with subversive warfare, during the last war, I would like to
make this observation. In the fall of 1941 and the winter of 1942, we expected
that subversive elements would be found mainly in the alien population. To our
amazement by 1943 we discovered such was not the case at all. Most aliens were
scared to death. So most of our disloyal individuals were old-line families in
this country. That was amazing to us, and we had to face the facts and recognize
it.99

By early March the War Department had come to appreciate that any general evacuation
of German and Italian aliens from the west coast (even with broad exemptions)
would be bound to produce repercussions throughout
the nation.100
When Attorney General Biddle heard about conferences on alien restrictions being
held in New York City, he sent a vigorous protest to President Roosevelt, in
which he contended that any German or Italian evacuation on the east coast would
have the gravest consequences to the nation's economic structure and war morale
since it would be bound to produce confusion and disaffection among persons
of those nationalities throughout the country. The President was in thorough
agreement with the seriousness of this prospect, and Mr. Stimson hastened
to assure him that "no such mass evacuation of aliens on the East Coast
as is suggested by Mr. Biddle's memorandum . . .
is either under way or contemplated,"
although he admitted that limited evacuations from particularly critical areas
were being studied. As a consequence, General Drum was informed that there must
be no evacuation of aliens within the Eastern Defense Command except with
the knowledge and approval of the War and Justice
Departments.101
With
Presidential approval the War Department on 22 April did extend the military
area system authorized by Executive Order 9066 to all of the continental defense
commands, but only after it had been explained to the President that this
extension was necessary to enforce dim-out and air defense regulations,
and so forth, and not for the purpose of controlling enemy aliens. "The
control of alien enemies," the President informed Mr. Stimson, "seems
to me to be primarily a civilian matter except of course in the case of the
Japanese mass evacuation on the Pacific Coast."102

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It was this background of related developments that determined the fate of
General DeWitt's recommendation, submitted through Colonel Bendetsen on 10 May
1942, for a limited collective evacuation of German and Italian aliens from
Military Area No. 1.103
When General DeWitt was told on the following day that
Mr. Stimson and Mr. McCloy were not inclined to agree with his recommendation,
he insisted that the removal of German and Italian aliens as recommended by
him was an essential war measure; and he insisted, too, that, if the War Department
refused to adopt his recommendation, then he must be given definite instructions
to the contrary that would exempt him from all responsibility for
the consequences.104
Before General DeWitt's recommendation could be discussed with the President,
the Congressional committee that had been studying the west coast evacuation
of the Japanese issued its second report, which, among other observations,
labeled any mass evacuation of German and Italian aliens "out of the question
if we intend to win this war."105
On 15 May the President approved
an alternative to General DeWitt's recommendation upon which the War Department
secretaries had already agreed. Instead of a collective evacuation of German
and Italian aliens from the west coast or from anywhere else in the United States,
the War Department would authorize the defense commanders to issue individual
exclusion orders against both aliens and citizens under the authority of Executive
Order 9066. Instructions to this effect, including a caution enjoining strict
secrecy, went to General DeWitt on 22 May and, although they did not contain the
waiver of responsibility he had requested, apparently they gave him a broad
enough grant of authority to satisfy his concern over the problem of German and
Italian aliens.106

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As for General DeWitt's intention of interning all of the other Japanese residents
of the Western Defense Command, the War Department approved the evacuation of
those in the eastern half of California only and left undisturbed those
in eastern Oregon and Washington, in northern Arizona, and in the other states
of the Western Defense Command--except, of course, as General DeWitt applied
to them his new authority to exclude suspected individuals from sensitive
areas.107
The final mass evacuation measure nevertheless affected about
10,000 persons
and was carried out by direct movements from places of residence to relocation
centers.108

The Western Defense Command completed the evacuation of more than 100,000 persons
of Japanese ancestry from Military Area No. 1 on 7 June, and the removals from
Military Area No. 2 in California were virtually complete by early August. The
Army kept control of the evacuees until 3 November 1942 when, with the last
movement from an assembly center to a relocation center, the War Relocation
Authority took over general responsibility for the care and disposition of
relocated Japanese.109

What were the reasons that impelled the Army to carry out the mass evacuation
of Japanese residents from the west coast beginning in March 1942? The general
answer to this question is that the President and Congress had approved mass
evacuation and the Secretary of War and his principal civilian assistant in
this matter themselves thought it necessary to carry it out. Mr. Stimson on
16 March (and before the evacuation had begun) referred to the prospect as a
"tragedy" that seemed "to be a military necessity" because
very large numbers of the Japanese were "located in close proximity to
installations of vital importance to the war
effort."110
A week later
Mr. McCloy reported, after his west coast visit, that there had been no cases
of sabotage traceable to the Japanese population, but that "there was much
evidence of espionage."111

The most damaging tangible evidence against the Japanese was that produced by
the intensive searches of their premises by the FBI from early February onward.
By May it had seized 2,592 guns of various kinds, 199,000

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rounds of ammunitions, 1,652 sticks of dynamite, 1,458 radio receivers, 2,914
cameras, 37 motion picture cameras, and numerous other articles that the alien
Japanese had been ordered to turn in at the beginning of January. Nonetheless,
after assessing this evidence, Department of Justice officials concluded:

We have not, however, uncovered through these searches any dangerous persons
that we could not otherwise know about. We have not found among all the sticks
of dynamite and gun powder any evidence that any of it was to be used in bombs.
We have not found a single machine gun nor have we found any gun in any
circumstances indicating that it was to be used in a manner helpful to our
enemies. We have not found a camera which we have reason to believe was for use
in espionage.112

There were better if less tangible grounds for suspecting that some of the Japanese
people--citizens as well as aliens--would become disloyal in the event of a Japanese
invasion. The Navy report of early February 1942 previously cited concluded
that a very small minority (less than 3 percent)
of alien and citizen Japanese were so fanatically loyal to Japan that they could
be expected to act as saboteurs or enemy agents, and a somewhat larger minority
might be passively disloyal, if given the
opportunity.113
On similar grounds the War Relocation Authority concluded that "a selective evacuation of
people of Japanese descent from the west coast military area was justified and
administratively feasible in the spring of 1942," although it concluded
also that a mass evacuation such as was actually carried out was
never justified.114
But no military estimate after December 1941 forecast even the possibility of
an invasion of the west coast by the Japanese in strength, and all disloyalty
among the Japanese remained passive until after their removal to relocation centers.

Although little support for the argument that military necessity required a
mass evacuation of the Japanese can be found in contemporary evidence, it might
be contended that the cooperation of the white population of the Pacific states
in the national defense effort could not have been otherwise assured. By March
1942 a large segment of that population along the coast was determined to be
rid of the Japanese, at least for the duration of the war. Prewar antipathies
combined with wartime fears into a formidable pressure for removal. Writing
in June, Mr. McCloy explained that the nature of the

--148--

attack on Pearl Harbor and the apparent exposure of the west coast to enemy
action left its "American populations . . . in a condition of great excitement
and apprehension," which "tended greatly to inflame our people against
all persons of Japanese ancestry."115
Shortly after the evacuation had
been completed, the Assistant Secretary commented to General Drum:

As you know, the Japanese were removed from the West Coast, first, because
of the proximity of the West Coast to the Japanese theater of operations and,
second, because of the very large number of Japanese concentrated in that area,
and thirdly, because of the fear that direct action might be taken against the
Japanese as a result of the rather antagonistic attitude of the local
population.116

Yet in Hawaii, with a considerably greater concentration of Japanese much closer
to the arena of operations, no similar removal occurred despite very similar
evacuation planning after Oahu's baptism of fire in
December 1941.117

Footnotes

2.
During the war the Army itself published a detailed report of the origins
and execution of the evacuation program: United States War Department,
Final Report: Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast, 1942
(Washington, 1943) (hereafter cited as War Department, Final Report).
The principal works published since the war are:
Mortin Grodzins, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949)
(hereafter cited as Grodzins, Japanese Evacuation);
Dorothy S. Thomas and Richard S. Nishimoto, The Spoilage
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946)
and The Salvage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952);
Jacobus tenBrock, Edward N. Barnhart, and Floyd W. Watson,
Prejudice, War and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954);
and the United States Department of the Interior, War Relocation Authority,
WRA: A Story of Human Conservation (Washington, 1946) (hereafter cited as WRA).

3.
A substantially similar account of the decision to evacuate the Japanese appeared
as study 4 in the collection of studies prepared by the Office of the Chief
of Military History, Command Decisions
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959),
and as study 5
in the publicly printed edition of this work (Washington, 1960).

4.
The background of attitudes and action toward the Japanese is described in
detail in tenBrock et al., Prejudice, War and the Constitution, ch. I.

18.
Grodzins, Japanese Evacuation, contains the most
detailed analysis of the pressures that developed during January and February
for Japanese evacuation. Most of the large number of communications addressed to
the War Department on this subject, and its responses, are in AG 014.311 files.
The first written communication of this sort received by the War Department was
dated 6 January 1942.

27.
Memo, Maj Bendetsen for PMG, 31 Jan 42, PMG 384.4 WDC.
The Congressional recommendations were a verbatim copy of a draft submitted by a representative
of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. See Grodzins, Japanese Evacuation, pages 67-69.

33.
Stimson Diary, entry of 3 Feb 42.
Mr. Stimson jotted down some rough notes of this meeting in an undated pencil memorandum,
in SW file, Aliens.
The press release as issued on 5 February 1942 is quoted in Grodzins,
Japanese Evacuation, 258.

41.
Rpt, Lt Comdr K.D. Ringle, Eleventh Naval District, through Commandant to
CNO, no date, copy in ASW 014.311 EAWC.
From the contents of this report, the
author concludes that it was written about 1 February 1942, rather than ten
days later as indicated in Grodzins, Japanese Evacuation, p. 146, note 46.
The substance of this report, the most detailed and sympathetic military analysis
of the Japanese problem in early 1942, was anonymously published in
Harper's Magazine, October 1942, pp. 489-97.

42.
Memo, Col Bendetsen for PMG, 4 Feb 42, PMG 014.311 Gen P/W;
Memo, PMG for CofS, 4 Feb 42, and inclosed draft of TAG letter to corps area commanders,
submitted to CCS at 3:00 p.m., 11 Feb 42, PMG 384.4 Gen.
On the outcome of the proposal to extend the military area scheme throughout
the continental United States, see Chapter II, above,
and this chapter, pp. 144-46, below.

45.
Memo, PMG for ASW, 6 Feb 42, ASW 014.311 EAWC.
After Secretary Stimson's conversation with President Roosevelt on 11 February (see below),
General Gullion sent a copy of this memorandum to General Marshall, who initialed it and
circulated it to the War Plans Division and GHQ (copy in AG 014.311 (1-13-41) , sec.1).
The author has been unable to find evidence that General Marshall
took any part in or was informed of developments in the planning of Japanese
evacuation between 3 and 11 February.

48.
This quotation is from an OCS condensation (on Tally Card 31 in re OCS 21227-88)
of information in the PMG daily Record of Operations of 7 February 1942 (an
item that General Marshall did not see). The file of this daily PMG compilation,
if it could be found, would be a valuable additional source for the story of
Japanese evacuation planning but it was probably destroyed.

49.
During the midst of their drafting, on 11 February, General DeWitt referred
to them collectively as "the plan that Mr. McCloy wanted me to submit."
Tel Conv, Gen DeWitt and Col Bendetsen with Gen Gullion, 11 Feb 42, WDC-CAD 31 1.3 Tel Convs (DeWitt, 42-43).
No direct evidence of the nature of the Assistant
Secretary's instructions to Colonel Bendetsen has been found, but in ASW 014.311
EAWC there is a Memo for Record, 8 February 1942, unsigned and with no indication
of authorship, that reads in part as follows: Japanese Evacuation, West Coast,
Prepare definite instructions for DeWitt on following basis: Select key points
where danger is great and size not too large. Put them in order of importance.
Evacuate everybody, aliens and citizens. Institute system of permits. Whole
matter to be handled by Army authorities. Then, as matter progresses, we will
soon find out how far we can go.

51.
The statistics in this paragraph have been compiled from General DeWitt's
several recommendations and supplementary communications that he wrote
in justification of them, which are located in various PMG files. None of the
enemy alien program recommendations submitted by General DeWitt through 16 February
included any American citizens of Japanese or other extraction. The concentration
of the Japanese population near strategic points seemed in itself to be sinister
in 1942 and was advanced in the War Department, Final Report (p. 9) as one of
the reasons that made their evacuation necessary. Actually, there was a greater
proportionate concentration of German and Italian aliens near strategic points
than there was of Japanese. General DeWitt's Category A recommendations would
have affected nine-tenths of the west coast German alien population and nearly
three-fourths of the Italian aliens, but less than two-thirds of the Japanese aliens.

53.
Memo for Rcd (unsigned), 11 Feb 42, ASW 014.311 EASC.
The figures given in (2) and (3) are about equal to the population of Japanese descent
that these steps would affect. It is also evident from Mr. Stimson's diary entries of 10
and 11 February that these proposals did not contemplate any mass evacuation
of German or Italian aliens. A re-examination of the diary has resulted in a
significant alteration in the account previously published in Command Decisions
about what happened on 11 February.

57.
Memo, CG WDC for SW (through CG FF), 13 Feb 42, and covering Memo, CG WDC
for CG FF GHQ, 14 Feb 42, originals in PMG 014.311 WDC.
The basic memorandum is published in War Department, Final Report, pages 33-38, where it is
erroneously dated 14 February. As of 11 February, General DeWitt was planning
to have Colonel Bendetsen carry his recommendations back to Washington;
but on 12 February, because of the general's doubt that GHQ and General Marshall
had been "thoroughly informed" of developments, he decided to submit
them through the normal channels of communication.
Tel Conv Gen DeWitt with Gen Clark, 14 Feb 42;
Tel Conv, Gen Gullion with Col Bendetsen, 114 Feb 42.
Both in WDC-CAD 3111.3 Tel Convs (DeWitt, 42-43).

58.
The recommendations of the 13 February memorandum are described below at
greater length in connection with the discussion of the War Department's directives
of 20 February.

59.
Both the original and carbon of General DeWitt's recommendations in AG 014.311
(1-13-41), sec.10, are stamped to indicate receipt in GHQ on the date and at
the hour indicated. As Colonel Bendetsen said on 19 February, the DeWitt
recommendations "must have hit the wrong air line."
Tel Conv, Col Bendetsen with Col Donald A. Stroh, 19 Feb 42, PMG 384.4 WDC.
The GHQ action is recorded in GHQ 337 Staff Confs, binder 2, entry of 19 Feb 42;
and in Memo, G-5 Sec GHQ for Gen Clark, 19 Feb 42, GHQ file, WDC: Enemy Aliens.

64.
Tel Conv, Gen DeWitt with Gen Gullion, 17 Feb 42, ASW 0114.311 EAWC.
In its Final Report, the War Department stated (page 25): "The War Department
representative {Colonel Bendetsen} carried back to the Secretary the recommendation
of the Commanding General that some method be developed empowering the Federal
Government to provide for the evacuation from sensitive areas of all persons
of Japanese ancestry, and any other persons individually or collectively regarded
as potentially dangerous. The Commanding General's proposal was reduced to writing
in a memorandum for the Secretary of War, dated February 14, 1942. . . . This
recommendation was presented to the Secretary of War on or about February
16th." No other evidence was found that the recommendations contained in
General DeWitt's memorandum to the Secretary of War were considered or referred
to in the preparation of new War Department directives on the subject between
17 and 20 February. After these directives were drafted and after talking with
General DeWitt on 20 February, Colonel Bendetsen wrote to the Secretary of War:
"It was I who misunderstood General DeWitt's plan--he has no mass movement
in mind." Memo, Col Bendetsen for SW, 21 Feb 42, and atchd transcript of
Tel Conv, Gen DeWitt with Col Bendetsen, 20 Feb 42, in SW file, Aliens.

65.
Memo, PMG for TAG, 17 Feb 42, PMG 384.4 WDC. The copy bears the notation:
"Gen Gullion took this up in person with Mr. McCloy who approves."

66.
Ltr, TAG to CG's, Corps Areas, 17 Feb 42, PMG 384.4 WDC.
The reference to all Japanese residents as aliens was rather frequent practice in Army exchanges
on the subject during February 1942.

67.
This last point was already fully appreciated in Washington but was confirmed
by Rad, CG Ninth Corps Area to TAG, 18 Feb 42, PMG 014.311 Corps Area Rpts on Housing Facilities.

68.
Stimson Diary, entry of 17 Feb 42;
Memo for Rcd, Gen Clark, 17 Feb 42, GHQ file, WDC: Enemy Aliens.
General Clark also told General Marshall about the
meeting and the decision about troops, but a search of Army records fails to
disclose evidence that the advice of the Chief of Staff was sought in the formulation
of the War Department plan for Japanese evacuation.

72.
Grodzins, Japanese Evacuation, pp. 331-39;
War Department, Final Report, pp. 29-31, 49.
On the legal aspects and consequences of the Presidential and
Congressional decisions, see Clinton Rossiter, The Supreme Court and the Commander
in Chief (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1951, pp. 42-54.

74.
The central objective of the War Department plan is clearly outlined in paragraphs
1-6 of the Outline Memorandum of 20 February, paragraphs omitted in the publication
of the memorandum in War Department, Final Report, pages 28-29.

75.
On 20 February, the date of the War Department's instructions to General
DeWitt, General Marshall concurred unreservedly in a British Chiefs of Staff
estimate that, "so long as the United States maintain a battle fleet in
the Pacific, large-scale seaborne expeditions against the western seaboard of
North America and the employment of capital ships in this area are considered
impracticable." (Ltr, Field Marshall Sir John Dill to Gen Marshall,
20 Feb 42 and Memo, Brig Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower to Sir John Dill, 20 Feb 42
both in OCS 21347-7.) In a general estimate of the situation a month later,
on 19 March 1942, G-2 held that the maximum foreseeable threat to the Pacific
coast was that from carrier-borne air raids against aircraft factories and naval
bases. (MIS WD Estimate 2, 19 Mar 42, OPD Exec 10, item 29).

84.
SW's Notes after Cabinet Mtg, 27 Feb 42, WDCSA 334 Mtgs and Confs.
The DeWitt plan referred to in this quotation was the plan proposed to Washington in drafts
of Public Proclamation 1 and the accompanying press release.

85.
tenBrock et al., Prejudice, War and the Constitution, pp. 118-22;
Tel Conv, Gen DeWitt with Gen Clark, 26 Feb 42, WDC-CAD 311.3 Tel Convs (DeWitt, 42-43);
G-4 Memo for Rcd, 1 Mar 42, G-4 file 32860. The last two items reflect the
War Department's own confusion about the arrangements for supervision from Washington,
which in part was due
to the imminent transfer of responsibilities under the impending general reorganization
of Army headquarters. After the reorganization of 9 March the Washington military
staff agencies almost disappear from the picture, except for the planning and
direction of construction by the Corps of Engineers with staff supervision by
the Services of Supply.

The term "relocation" was used first (and was still so used when the
War Relocation Authority was established) to mean voluntary resettlement by the Japanese;
after voluntary migration failed, it was used to describe the
permanent camps to which the Japanese were sent from the Army's assembly centers.
In the Supreme Court's decision upholding the constitutionality of evacuation,
in the case of Korematsu v. United States decided on 18 December 1944, the majority
opinion, in referring to the relocation centers, stated: "We deem it unjustifiable
to call them concentration camps with all the ugly connotations that term implies."
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Owen J. Roberts referred to "the so-called
Relocation Centers, a euphemism for concentration camps."
323 United States Reports, pp. 223, 230.

90.
Col Charles P. Stacey, "Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War,"
Six Years of War: The Army in Canada, Britain and the Pacific
(Ottawa: E. Cloutier, Queen's Printer, 1955),
p.169.

91.
Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948), p. 44ff.

100.
Memo, Alfred Jaretzki, Jr., Special Asst to ASW, for Col Ralph H. Tate, 4 Jun 42, ASW 014.311 Gen.
This memorandum presents a good detailed resume of
the German-Italian evacuation question as it developed between February and May 1942.

103.
Memo, Col Bendetsen for ASW, 10 May 42, ASW 014.311 WDC Gen.
Colonel Bendetsen had returned to Washington to present General DeWitt's recommendation in person,
and he prepared the memorandum as a formal recommendation of General DeWitt
rather than as a personal expression of his own opinion.

The rejection of General DeWitt's May recommendation concerning the removal
of German and Italian aliens, which he explicitly justified on grounds of military
necessity and at a time when the Pacific outlook was considerably grimmer than
it had been in February
(see Chapter IV, above),
certainly weakens the theory,
advanced in the War Department, Final Report and elsewhere after 1942,
that the War Department acted on evacuation in accordance with recommendations
of the commanding general that in turn were based on the general's estimate
of the military necessity of the situation. There is no more than a trace of
this theory in War Department records that antedate the preparation of
the Final Report by the Western Defense Command in early 1943.

108.
More than half of these were Japanese who had moved voluntarily into the
interior of California from Military Area No. 1, the majority of whom moved
on the two days between the issuance of the "freeze order" of 27 March
and its effective date of 29 March.

111.
Notes on War Council, 23 Mar 42, SW Conf, binder 2.
No proven instances of espionage after Pearl Harbor among the Japanese population
have ever been disclosed.

112.
Draft of Memo, early May 42, Atty Gen for President Roosevelt, as quoted
in Grodzins, Japanese Evacuation, pp. 134-36.
A major portion of the first two items listed above was picked up in a raid on a sporting goods shop.